Last week I had the opportunity to shadow a fellow member of The Data School (Jessica) on their third placement at LNER. I spent the morning with Jessica trying to take in as much information as possible and in the end, I learnt a lot about what life is like on placement.
We started the day with a catch-up call on Microsoft Teams and it was good to sit in on a meeting and see the topics of conversation amongst the data team. At the start of the week, a large amount of data had been received from the LNER call centre and Jessica and the rest of the data team were having their first look through it. It was interesting to see the condition of the data that was received and the process the team was applying to try and figure out what each field meant reminded me of how DS37 often start each client project. Once Jessica had got all the information she could from the rest of the team we left the call and opened up the data in Alteryx. We explored the data using a range of tools that I’d been using during training and we began to find inconsistencies and holes within it. We wrote a list of findings and related questions for those who might know more about the call centre processes.
Jessica then went on to show me numerous Alteryx workflows that LNER had developed prior to the placement and I noticed several tools that I wasn’t familiar with. The workflows used the Reporting and Email tools frequently and Jessica explained to me how LNER liked to have regular reports emailed as PDFs to certain colleagues directly from Alteryx. I was shown how the tools were set up and felt I gained a good understanding of how and when they may be used on placement. We then went through some dashboards that Jessica had created on placement and it was great to see the type of things that LNER wanted to visualise. We also went through some of the challenges associated with creating the dashboards and some of the specific requirements set by the company. It was interesting to see how some of the requirements set by LNER went against the best practices I’ve learnt at The Data School.
Overall, shadowing was an enjoyable and beneficial morning where I felt I’d gained a good understanding of what it’s like to go out on placement. It was great to find that I felt able to understand and contribute to the work that was going on and I now feel more ready to go on placement myself.